Why Is Being Fired Called ‘Getting the Pink Slip’?

It’s the moment employees dread: being hauled into an office (or Zoom meeting) and informed your employer is downsizing, tightening up, or otherwise streamlining its workforce. You’re being laid off. You’re “getting the pink slip.”

The euphemism for being out of work has been around for decades, but was it ever literal? Would employers hand out actual pink pieces of paper to terminated workers? If so, why pink? Why must bad news be color-coordinated?

1. The Origin of the Pink Slip
2. Getting the Pink Slip

The Origin of the Pink Slip

The lexicographers at the Oxford English Dictionary trace the first printed appearance of pink slip to 1901 when it was used in reference to insurance companies notifying customers of rate increases for property coverage. The official explanation for the slips came down to companies assessing greater risk for a home. However, there was some controversy over whether the risk was real or just an excuse to gouge customers.

In June 1905, The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Washington, reported that insurance agents were upset about a 20 percent rate hike for fire policies, fearing their customers would object.

“The pink slip should be taken off,” one agent told the paper. “It was put on to compel the city to establish a new water system, and now that the city has gone ahead in good faith to establish such a system, the pink slip has accomplished its purpose and should be abolished.”

Whether pink slip in this context meant an actual pink piece of paper included with an insurance bill is difficult to ascertain. It could be an early use of the euphemism indicating something in need of the recipient’s urgent attention or a document that needed to stand out and be easily identified.

Pink slip was also used in the world of tax returns in the 1930s when such slips disclosed the annual salaries of taxpayers minus deductions in a Department of the Treasury report. Taxpayers received a literal pink slip to fill out their income information. In contrast, a yellow slip was for income without deductions. (The bill permitting these disclosures was ultimately repealed.)

In the early 20th century, certificates of ownership for cars were printed on pink paper, and having that proof meant “having the pink slip.” While this context wasn’t negative, it did further associate pink slips with matters of importance. In 1900, for example, The Bryan Press of Bryan, Ohio, sent subscription bills on a pink slip to capture the attention of readers.

Pink slips have also circulated in education, with misbehaving grade school students receiving pink slips for infractions since the early 20th century. In a 1985 profile of Miller Elementary in Merrillville, Indiana, it was reported that more than one pink slip could mean losing out on recess. Four slips and parents would be called. Parents needed to sign the slips to acknowledge they received them.

Clearly, pink slip denoted a document deserving of one’s attention, not unlike the way a document may print important text in bold. But how did it come to mean getting fired?

Getting the Pink Slip

The OED cites the first use of pink slip as a means of termination in a 1904 typographical journal, which cautioned that “a revise proof to correct is regarded as a cardinal sin, for a ‘pink slip’ is charged up against the delinquent, and a certain number of these means discharge.” In a 1922 edition of The Roanoke Times, a theater manager was quoted as saying that any usher found receiving a tip from a patron would get “a little pink slip.”

But the question remains: Has any fired employee been handed an actual pink slip, or did it slide directly into euphemism territory from the pink slips of the insurance and income tax worlds?

At least a few workers have received one. In June 1937, a number of teachers were laid off from jobs facilitated by the federal government’s WPA Adult Education Project. According to The Daily News, employees based in New York were dismissed in a dire scene at which police were present to prevent any civil disobedience or outbursts:

“Women with taut faces marched through a line of guards and up to tables where clerks sat. Some were handed pink slips. They were fired. Some were given yellow buttons. They were hired and shunted through another line of guards to their work.”

The Daily News also reported that one laid-off worker “had pinned his pink slip to his lapel” in protest of the firings.

The article leaves little room to interpret the pink slip as conceptual: The laid-off workers had physical pink slips in their possession. How frequently this occurred is hard to say, but it’s evidence that the pink slip wasn’t always metaphorical.

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